윌라 캐더의 나의 안토니아에 나타난 동성애적 딜레마

Abstract

Park, Yun-ki. “Willa Cather’s Homosexual Dilemma in her My Ántonia.” Studies on English Language & Literature. 33.1(2007): 237-254. This paper is to examine the homosexual dilemma in Willa Cather’s My Ántonia. Willa Cather, as Sharon O’Brien suggested in her Willa Cather, was a lesbian author. As she lived in 19th century, she had to face the conflict between the traditional idea of what it was to be a woman and what it was to achieve. So Cather adopted the male persona, in My Ántonia, her most outstanding and mature work, as a way out of facing great anxiety. Her greatest love was Isabel McClung, whom she met in Pittsburgh in 1898. McClung’s sudden announcement, however, to marry the violinist Jan Hambourg made her first stunned and then depressed. During the troubled period when she felt abandoned by McClung, Cather was writing My Ántonia. Clearly, throughout the work, her deepest affections given to women are evidently hidden. As a woman and writer, Willa Cather was suffered from her homosexual dilemma. But she had to conceal her lesbianism in her social climate. I insist, therefore, that Cather should encode her lesbianism under the guise of male persona, Jim Burden, in My Ántonia. (Paichai University)